David N. Snyder wrote:"Jews will not replace us" ? Replace them where? Jews are only about 1 to 2% of the population and I know I'm generalizing, but somehow I don't think they are competing for the same jobs.

I recall you wrote the following:

Molyneux places Ashkenazi Jews at the top as the most intelligent...Jews hold many higher positions, imo, because of the culture which pushes higher education and worldly success.

To many, these holding many higher positions have not been doing a good job & have been alleged to be working for their self-interests, which is why those holding many higher positions are blamed. You sound surprised about this blame, as though it is related to 'identity' ('racism'; 'antisemitism') rather than to 'kamma' ('behaviour'). If many Buddhists on the internet are lost in 'identity politics', obviously non-Buddhists would get lost in 'identity politics' and start stereotyping & blaming identity groups.

The Rise of the Jewish Policy Elite: Meritocracy, Myth and Power

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York.

Introduction: Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court marks a continuation and deepening of the lopsided ethno-religious representation in the US judicial system. If Garland is appointed, Jewish justices will comprise 45% of the Court, even though they represent less than 2% of the overall population....

We can cite the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan’s deregulatory policies, which led to the greatest financial crash since the Great Depression and his successor, Benjamin Bernanke, who presided over the trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street banks while millions of American’s lost their homes. Both attended elite institutions, both secured numerous prestigious awards . . . and both imposed disastrous policies on the American nation and people – with complete impunity for their monumental mistakes, while American workers continue to suffer....

From the Clinton era through the George W. Bush and Obama regimes, the US engaged in a series of wars against predominantly secular governments in Muslim countries, which had been opposed to Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine. Key policymakers in the design and execution of US war policy were prominent Jews bristling with diplomas from the most prestigious universities....

Jack Lew, Secretary of the Treasury (2013-2016) heads an ethno-Chauvinist quintet dictating US foreign and domestic economic policy (with Michael Froman, Chief Trade Negotiator; ‘Penny’ Pritzer, Secretary of Commerce; Lawrence Summers, Director of National Economic Council and Janet Yellen, head of the Federal Reserve Bank). Lew pushed policies favoring the wealthiest 1% along with his co-religionist Michael Froman, while millions of Americans were plunged into poverty and stagnation....

Conclusion
From our discussion it is clear that there is a profound disparity between the stellar academic achievements of Israel-First officials in the US government and the disastrous consequences of their public policies in office....

The gulf between academic credentials and actual performance extends to economic policy. Neo-liberal policies favoring Wall Street speculators were adopted by such strategic policymakers as Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Lawrence Summers. Their ‘leadership’ rendered the country vulnerable to the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression with millions of Americans losing employment and homes. Despite their role in creating the conditions for the crisis, their ’solution’ compounded the disaster by transferring over a trillion dollars from the US Treasury to the investment banks, as a taxpayer-funded bailout of Wall Street. Under their economic leadership, class inequalities have deepened; the financial elite has grown many times richer. Meanwhile, wars in the Middle East have drained the US Treasury of funds, which should have been used to serve the social needs of Americans and finance an economic recovery program through massive domestic investments and repair of our collapsing infrastructure.

The trade policies under the leadership of this ‘meritocratic’ elite – formerly called the ‘Chosen People’ – have been an unmitigated disaster for the majority of industrial workers, resulting in huge trade deficits and the deskilling of low paid service employment – with profound implications for future generations of American workers. It is no longer a secret that an entire generation of working class Americans has descended into poverty with no prospects of escape – except through narcotics and other degradation. On the ‘flip side’ of the ‘winners and losers’, US finance capital has expanded overseas with acquisition and merger fees enriching the 0.1% and the meritocratic officials happily rotating from their Washington offices to Wall Street and back again.

Yeah, I saw this video before and it seems like it is saying some good things...maybe it is a platform of people who support free speech and some white nationalists want to use it as a way to make people think that they are more moderate than they really are. But, free speech is free speech and even white nationalists should be included in that in my view.

Seem like the video points out that there are people dressed in black who call them selves antifa who are disrupting people's free speech rights and I think that is true....

I don't support white nationalism but I don't see how what the video seems to be is a bad thing.....although a video like this is not a way to judge what they were doing one way or the other.
chownah
P.S. A comment on a previous post: Identity politics dominates all sides of american politics at the moment.
chownah

Heaven forbid if Seattle, Portland, and the Bay Area are ever deemed places where conservatives are denied their right to express their views. The Portland Rose Parade was cancelled this year because Antifa threatened to pull mainstream Republicans from the parade and to beat them. Patriot Prayer had nothing to do with their threat: it was a purely one-sided affair on the part of Antifa in its retaliation against President Trump.

The next day, Gibson and Toese attended a Berkeley “March Against Marxism” in a downtown park, where they were chased away by antifascists; police arrested them in order to keep them safe from the crowd. An outpouring of negative press against antifascists occurred after incidents that day.

And rightly so. Even provocateurs – be they American and on American soil – are entitled to their First Amendment right. The primary purpose of the First Amendment is to protect speech that most of us find unacceptable. And that is true of speech coming from the left as well, though it doesn't give either side the right to commit violence. (It should be noted that people weren't merely "chased away" at the Berkeley rally: they were beaten and assaulted with pepper spray.)

I was just north of the Bay Area when the violence occurred, and even the heavily left-leaning local media was appalled by the actions of Antifa at the rally. Understandably Nancy Pelosi and a number of other prominent Democrats including the mayor of Berkeley have expressed their alarm and have condemned Antifa as being a dark and ugly turn in the effort to resist President Trump.

David N. Snyder wrote:"Jews will not replace us" ? Replace them where? Jews are only about 1 to 2% of the population and I know I'm generalizing, but somehow I don't think they are competing for the same jobs.

I recall you wrote the following:

Molyneux places Ashkenazi Jews at the top as the most intelligent...Jews hold many higher positions, imo, because of the culture which pushes higher education and worldly success.

To many, these holding many higher positions have not been doing a good job & have been alleged to be working for their self-interests, which is why those holding many higher positions are blamed. You sound surprised about this blame, as though it is related to 'identity' ('racism'; 'antisemitism') rather than to 'kamma' ('behaviour'). If many Buddhists on the internet are lost in 'identity politics', obviously non-Buddhists would get lost in 'identity politics' and start stereotyping & blaming identity groups.

I'm not at all surprised by scapegoating. Jews have been scapegoated for several millennia. I just found it somewhat amusing when they chanted "Jews will not replace us" and couldn't help but think, "replace them where?" as they are not competing for the same jobs, same positions. To generalize, the neo-nazis are lower educated and the Jews are (on average) higher educated, as your link even suggests, so obviously not competing for the same jobs or positions.

In spite of my own Hebrew-ancestry, I don't support U.S. foreign policy and have spoke out and written against it many times. Being a Buddhist and anti-war trumps tribal affiliation, for me.

David N. Snyder wrote:I'm not at all surprised by scapegoating. Jews have been scapegoated for several millennia.

Sure. Today society is more secular, diverse & individualising, including among Jewish people. But, historically, when the Jewish people were an isolated community (of their own choosing), their leaders generally formed part of the European oligarchy, where Jews administered estates on behalf of European Nobles, particularly in Poland, where Jews lent money, collected taxes, etc, from the Polish peasants. When they lost their Polish power due to Russian & Prussian power over Poland, they become revolutionaries. In England, from 1066 to around 1266, Jews were not citizens but directly ruled by the King, where Jews similarly performed tasks for the King. The Magna Carta has two explicit provisions about people's rights in relation to Jewish money-lending. While Jews definitely have been scapegoated (a convenient arrangement by their European Noble overlords), Jewish leaders/elite have always been part of the oligarchy, which remains today,due to their expertise in money-lending or finance obtained during Christian & Islam empires, where money-lending by non-Jews was prohibited. I say this not for the purpose of blame but for perspective. I think falling back on the excuse of 'scapegoating', 'antisemitism', etc, is simply not sufficient & dangerous (for Jews). Jewish people have lead the banking industries in Europe and this banking is part of the current common people's discontent. Thus, while scapegoating & stereotyping should definitely be avoided, recognition of what leads to that scapegoating & stereotyping should be highlighted for the sake of clear-seeing.

David N. Snyder wrote:In spite of my own Hebrew-ancestry, I don't support U.S. foreign policy and have spoke out and written against it many times. Being a Buddhist and anti-war trumps tribal affiliation, for me.

Wonderful & relevant. So many Jewish people are doing great things here (but not Bernie Sanders), such as Seymour Hersh, Noam Chomsky, Alfred Marder (despite his communism) and thousands, even millions of other good humane Jewish people.

The first cries of “media bias” may not have been sounded here, but the charge certainly found its voice in the Tar Heel State.

As my colleague Rob Christensen observed at a recent N&O/ABC 11 forum on “fake news,” Jesse Helms returned to the subject often in the regular commentaries he delivered on WRAL-TV from 1960-72, launching his Senate career.

In the decades since, the chorus has intensified thanks to the rise of conservative talk radio, Fox News and partisan watchdog groups including the Media Research Center.

As an ink-stained Pollyanna, I half expected my liberal brethren to take these criticisms seriously. When tens of millions of people point out that you are too often failing in your core mission to report without fear or favor, an honest reckoning is the only response.

Instead, the media has hunkered down behind a rhetorical swivel, dismissing the criticism as partisan “media bashing.” The fault lies not with them, but the vast right-wing conspiracy.

Charges of bias have become their rationale for doubling down on bias. They blithely flick away all criticism because, well, Rush and Fox and all the rest – i.e., about half the nation – are delusional at best and willful liars at worst.

Instead of serving as honest brokers that provide their audiences with information they need to make up their own minds, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other outlets have become nakedly partisan outfits.

I wouldn't include the N&O in that list, but its readers might have a hard time appreciating that our state has done just fine since Republicans won power in 2010. The thrust of coverage has focused on wedge issues – especially the Moral Monday movement, HB2, election reform and illegal immigration – through stories that invariably cast conservatives in a harsh light. Today, there is less and less space between the political coverage and its editorial pages.

For their part, the national media have been engineering a slow-motion coup since Trump’s election, betraying our profession by peddling fake news.

Despite the breathless coverage, there is still zero evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the 2016 election.

Despite the ugly smears and gross innuendo, there is no evidence that Trump or the “deplorable” and “irredeemable” Americans who elected him are white supremacists.

But boy, do these fantasies have legs.

So does the phony charge that Trump is an authoritarian bent on destroying the constitution. Again there is zero evidence for that charge. Zero.

In another incoherent irony, media heavyweights lambasted Trump last week as “cruel” and “inhumane” for rescinding President Obama’s illegal grant of temporary amnesty to illegal immigrants brought here as children. Never mind that Obama himself had repeatedly admitted that he lacked such authority before subverting the Constitution. But in the newspeak of modern news, he’s a hero and Trump is a fascist.

Similarly, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was attacked last week for saying we should revisit the “Dear Colleague” letter sent by the Obama administration in 2011 regarding how schools handle sexual assault. Forgoing the customary “notice-and-comment” period, the letter demanded radical changes, including the gutting of due process. In our upside world, those who acted by fiat are celebrated and DeVos, who is working through proper channels, is cast as a threat.

The far greater threat to our Constitution are those unhinged writers and Democrat officials demanding that some small group of experts be empowered to remove our democratically elected president from office because, they claim, he’s unstable. Do they have any idea of how dangerous that is? Do they care?

As disheartening as all of this, it’s not surprising. Journalists are people, too. Most live in deep blue urban areas – from New York, Washington and Los Angeles to Wake and Mecklenburg counties. They share the views of their neighbors in our angrily divided nation.

Journalism is also a business. As audiences fracture into partisan echo chambers, there is increasing pressure to tell customers what they want to hear. With their fragile bottom lines, news outlets, like politicians, are wary of alienating their base.

The Pollyanna in me wishes my colleagues would see this ugly madness as a wake-up call and embrace the values of fairness they claim to hold. That’s not going to happen. But maybe they could stop the charade. Go back to the old tradition where news outlets proclaimed their partisan leanings – maybe put Democrat or Republican back in their names.

“How can you believe in free speech, but think the government can compel people to use certain pronouns when talking to others?” Greg Burt of the California Family Council testified in July.

“This is not tolerance. This is not love. This is not mutual respect. True tolerance tolerates people with different views. We need to treat each other with respect, but respect is a two-way street. It is not respectful to threaten people with punishment for having sincerely held beliefs that differ from your own.”

“How can you believe in free speech, but think the government can compel people to use certain pronouns when talking to others?” Greg Burt of the California Family Council testified in July.

“This is not tolerance. This is not love. This is not mutual respect. True tolerance tolerates people with different views. We need to treat each other with respect, but respect is a two-way street. It is not respectful to threaten people with punishment for having sincerely held beliefs that differ from your own.”

Metta,
Paul.

From what I can tell from the article the penalty for knowing spread of hiv is from 8 years to 6 months while the penalty for PEOPLE WORKING IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS intentionally using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person under their service is 1 year or less.

In the hospital setting it is important to help the patient to remain calm and to have a good relationship with those who are their care givers......intentionally using the wrong pronoun is in effect a health risk factor in the hospital setting.
chownah

From what I can tell from the article the penalty for knowing spread of hiv is from 8 years to 6 months while the penalty for PEOPLE WORKING IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS intentionally using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person under their service is 1 year or less.

I do understand such a thing being a sackable offence, but I cannot fathom on what basis it ought to be deemed a criminal offence. The blurring of these two domains is a concern...

From what I can tell from the article the penalty for knowing spread of hiv is from 8 years to 6 months while the penalty for PEOPLE WORKING IN PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS intentionally using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person under their service is 1 year or less.

I do understand such a thing being a sackable offence, but I cannot fathom on what basis it ought to be deemed a criminal offence. The blurring of these two domains is a concern...

Metta,
Paul.

Should a health care professional INTENTIONALLY jeaprodizing the health of a patient be considered a criminal offence? I agree that it seems extreme.....but do remember that the 1 year sentence to imprisonment is the harshest reaction possible....no mention was made of what the typical reaction would be. I agree that dismissal would be a more appropriate action for someone not willing to provide a better interface with the patient. If I remember correctly the article said that this law will probably be found to be unconstitutional anyway so is probably best seen as just one more of those crazy things that politicians do in an effort to garner votes.

It is kind of weird for unprofessional actions to be subject to prosecution, rather than firing, or disciplinary action, or sanctions by the profession. But perhaps that's just the way the US system works.

However I've no idea why this example is in a thread about threats to free speech.